Tag Archives: sources

The Investigatory Powers Act has now been law for almost six months. For journalists and publishers this means having to remember that the webpages that you and your sources visit, who you call on your phone, and where you take it, are all being collected and potentially accessed by a range of authorities*.

Radiolab’s recent podcast The Buried Bodies Case is a brilliant piece of storytelling. The producers’ newsgathering; the choices of elements and how they are arranged; the tight editing and use of silence — all these make for a masterclass in longform narrative that any journalism student would benefit from exploring.

But it’s not that which prompted me to blog about it.

The content of the podcast is perhaps the best exploration of journalist-source ethics I’ve heard, without it actually being about journalists.

Spoiler alert: if you want to enjoy the podcast without knowing where it goes, then stop here, listen to it, and then come back. Continue reading →

Social media accounts that have been hacked in the past few years include those reporting on subjects as innocuous as entertainment and the weather, while commercial organisations including Microsoft and Vodafone have hacked journalists’ communications when they wrote about them. This week a journalist was found guilty of helping hackers access a newspaper CMS, causing almost $1m in damage.

But local journalists’ and editors’ perception of the issue is that security is “another planet”, there’s no strategy for protecting branded social media accounts, and it is assumed reporters who routinely need to protect their sources are “usually pretty conversant with that kind of issue”.

Unfortunately, on the whole they are not. More than one experienced crime reporter that I spoke to operated on the basis that police requests to access their sources would come through the newspaper. “They’ve never taken action to gain that information from me,” one said.

But the key thing that I’ve discovered is that networked working practices in modern newsrooms mean that information regarding sensitive stories can still be accessed through communications with colleagues who do not consider security to affect them.

1 in 5 lack even basic password security

Despite feeling that security issues did not affect them, around half of journalists had made some changes to their behaviour online in the past year.

But a significant proportion of journalists were not even using different passwords for different accounts – one of the most basic security practices.

16% of journalists did not do any of the following: use different passwords, clear their browser history, turn off cookies, turn off geolocation or use enhanced privacy settings on social media.

Journalists overwhelmingly said that they did not know what their organisation was doing about internet security. But perhaps more importantly, editors did not know either. “I should know the answer to that,” said one, “and it’s worrying that I don’t.”

Strangely, even though only 4% of respondents said that their employers had taken steps in the last 12 months on the issue, almost a third of respondents made the leap of faith to say that their employers were “doing enough”.

Newsroom processes aren’t set up for modern law and technology

One thing became very clear: newsrooms and work processes are still set up for an analogue world where protecting sources is a reactive process. Discussions about sensitive sources focus on a potential legal defence if approached directly. No processes are in place to anticipate or prevent sources’ identities being accessed indirectly.

Likewise IT policies focus on protecting email – but there is little consideration to securing social media accounts.

And journalists felt unable to advise sources who were unwilling to talk because of workplace surveillance and contracts with ‘gagging’ clauses.

What I’m doing about it

I’ve organised an event to try to begin to address these issues, with people who have been directly affected, experts on law (including employment law) and people who can advise on the technical side. It’s in Salford at BBC in Media City on Friday November 6 – you can sign up here.

The surprise of the Logan Symposium‘s second day was the appearance of Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked those documents in 1971. “Secrets are not kept so much by technical means but by people,” he said. Continue reading →

In a world where an extraordinary amount of people own smartphones, it’s easier than ever to connect instantaneously with those affected by significant news events wherever you happen to be based. But what tools can help reporters find those affected?

Simple searches on Twitter or Facebook may present too many ‘junk leads’ to wade through. Tools like TweetDeck are better, but what if you were able to find social media users more quickly through geolocation? Surely that would be a much more efficient method?